The Ring of Fire: Dependent Origination
The ninth installment of a twelve-part series
Ajahn Amaro
June 27, 2008
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Page 1 of 16“Circles can be peaceful,
But they can also be vicious”
Ajahn Sucitto
A talk given in Diamond Heights, San Francisco, May 1993
And what, monks, is the Noble Truth of the Arising of Suffering?
Dependent on ignorance arise formations; dependent on formations, consciousness; dependent on consciousness, mind and body; dependent on mind and body, the six senses; dependent on the six senses, contact; dependent on contact, feeling; dependent on feeling, desire; dependent on desire, clinging; dependent on clinging, the process of becoming; dependent on the process of becoming, birth; dependent on birth, ageing and death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief and despair come to pass. Thus does the whole mass of suffering arise.
This, monks, is called the Noble Truth of the Arising of Suffering.
And what, monks, is the Noble Truth of the Cessation of Suffering?
Through the entire cessation of ignorance, formations cease; through the cessation of formations, consciousness; through the cessation of consciousness, mind and body; through the cessation of mind and body, the six senses; through the cessation of the six sense, contact; through the cessation of contact, feeling; through the cessation of feeling, desire; through the cessation of desire, clinging; through the cessation of clinging, the process of becoming; through the cessation of the process of becoming, birth; through the cessation of birth, ageing and death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief and despair all cease. Thus there is the cessation of the whole mass of suffering.
This, monks is called the Noble Truth of the Cessation of Suffering.
Angattara Nikaya III 61
A little while ago when we were passing through Soquel I was slightly surprised by a notice-board by the side of the road which simply said, “eschew obfuscation.” Which means, “Don’t be difficult to understand.” I couldn’t figure out why it was there but it was the most literary road sign I have seen in the whole United States! I realise that we are entering a somewhat technical subject this evening so you must forgive me if I get too obfuscatory and difficult to follow; I
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will try and keep things fairly clear, though, and give you symbols, explanations and imagery that is easy to follow.
Apart from being translated as Dependent Origination, this subject also has been rendered as ‘Conditioned Genesis’ or ‘The Cycle of Subjective Captivity.’ As well as in other places, this pattern of insight is contained in a number of the descriptions of the Buddha’s enlightenment. A week after the great Awakening, when he emerged from his absorption in the bliss of release, his first night was spent contemplating this. It is described that during the first two hours of the night, he followed it going in the forward order, ‘with the grain,’ from ignorance through to birth, old age, sickness and death. In the second watch of the night he contemplated it in the order ‘against the grain,’ with the cessation of ignorance through to the cessation of old age, suffering and death. Then in the last watch of the night he contemplated it forwards and backwards, in both forward and reverse order. His enlightenment was actually the process of understanding this simple pattern; so this is mighty stuff, these are the essentials of the Teaching. If we look we can see that it’s an analysis of the Second and the Third Noble Truth: the Second Truth being the cause of the arising of dukkha, of dissatisfaction, and the third Truth being the ending, cessation, and fading away of dukkha.
Other descriptions of the enlightenment are in terms of insight into the Four Noble Truths and the Three True Knowledges, but obviously these are just different ways of looking at the same thing. What we have in this simple pattern of arising and the ceasing described here is the journey from the Second to the Third Truth: from what causes us to experience dissatisfaction, alienation and so on, to what brings about its cessation, its transcendence.
The Buddha said, “Rather than trying to figure out a metaphysical structure for time, life, the universe and the mind, just put attention onto the essential elements of this vast subject because this
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is what is significant.” If we can figure out what causes us to experience suffering and we can see what enables us to transcend suffering, then we are doing the best we can with human life. If we pick up information on how the whole machine works or came into existence, then that is fine, but it is an extra; because even if we can’t understand the nature of the universe conceptually, if we are in harmony with it, where’s the problem??? There isn’t one!
The traditional presentation of the this teaching can be read in a couple of different ways: on the one level, the external, we are talking about the arrival in the world of a human being, the arising of dissatisfaction and its effects; the other approach is to regard it as a pattern referring to the psychological domain – a pattern we are experiencing within ourselves on a momentary basis. The first one is what you find in most of the classical scriptures and commentaries, they talk about this very much in an external way. But more recently some, particularly Ajahn Buddhadasa and Ajahn Chah in Thailand, have taken this formulation and pointed out, “Well, if we talk about this just as how suffering arises due to causes before this life, this doesn’t give us a very good tool for meditation or for transcending dukkha right here and now.”
Ajahn Buddhadasa spent many years analyzing this and explaining how one can regard this same process as occurring in a momentary pattern. He gives a very clear description of how our experience arises and how it can turn into suffering – and how we can break that cycle of recurring habits and transcend the suffering that we create. He has received quite a bit of flak for this from more ‘orthodox’ quarters but Ajahn Chah was very much taken by this approach towards understanding and using Dependent Origination, and this is what he used to teach himself.
The first type of interpretation is referred to as the ‘Three Life Theory,’ described as taking place over
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three life spans. The other is described as the ‘momentary.’ Ajahn Chah was very keen on the usefulness of it as a description of our momentary experience because, if one uses it in that way, it is a very immediate and powerful tool for working on our life and it shows us that our destiny, if you like, is not out of our grip. The first one tends to be more of a fatalistic interpretation.
The first one is described in the way the Buddha arrived at it during the night of enlightenment where he sat down and considered, “Why is there suffering?” This rendition is from Oriental Mythology by Joseph Campbell:
“Where there is birth, there is inevitably old age, disease and death.
Where there has been attachment, then there is birth.
Where there is desire, there is then attachment.
Where a perception, there desire.
Where a contact, there perception.
Where there are organs of sense, that gives rise to the contact.
Where there is an organism, that is where the organs of sense arise from.
Where there is incipient consciousness, there, there is an organism.
Where there are inclinations derived from acts, there, there is created incipient consciousness.
And where there is ignorance, that creates these inclinations.
Therefore ignorance must be declared to be the root.”
So this means that, because of past actions, unrealised biases are carries on from a previous life. When a being dies, the momentum of karma, attachment to ‘fear of that,’ ‘desire for this,’ ‘aversion to that,’ this is what is called ‘inclinations derived from acts,’ the habits that we have built up over a lifetime. So that when a person or any being dies, the unfinished business and habits of a lifetime are like the momentum of a flywheel, they carry on, and when the body dies, there is still the momentum of karma. This is the first life.
This gives rise to incipient consciousness. This means that that momentum gathers together as some form of consciousness. Once the body has died, then of course there is a large
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part missing from your world! Because of the enormous attachment to the body for most people, when the body dies, then one of the major inclinations is “Find me a body! Give me a body.” Then that inclination is pulled towards a place of rebirth, either in the human world, the animal world, or heavenly world or wherever. (For the sake of simplicity we can just talk about the human world.) Then, having gravitated to the human world, we have the six sense organs. The process of contact and perception then proceeds, then desire, attachment and becoming – end of second life – and then birth again. Then, after this second birth we carry on into the future, living this life into old age, sickness and death again – end of life the third – phew!
Incidentally, the main propounder of this theory, Acarya Buddhaghosa, when he gets to the end of his explanation says something like, “Quite frankly, I don’t really understand this, but this is the best I can do with what I can figure out from the scriptures.” I remember when I read this for the first time, I thought, “Well… it kind of hangs together, but of what real use is this to me? This insight is supposed to have been what liberated the Buddha?? It’s a neat little puzzle that you can fit together (just), but so what!” Then in later times, when I came across the descriptions by Ajahn Chah and Ajahn Buddhadasa, it made a lot more sense because it is talking about something a lot more experiential and immediate. It’s talking about the effect of ignorance here and now.
To begin with, when considering the ‘momentary’ approach, it’s important to talk about the fundamental nature of mind, Original Mind. To describe this one uses terms like ‘Suchness,’ tathata, but there are other descriptions also: this is from a Tibetan teacher, Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso Rinpoche:
“This luminous, self-aware non-conceptual mind, that is experienced in meditation, is Absolute Reality and not a viññana (partial, fragmented knowing). When the luminous Wisdom Mind is
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realised there is no seeing and seen aspect to that realisation. This is the non-conceptual non-dual Wisdom mind itself, the Clear Light Nature of Mind, the Pabhassara Citta, it is also called the Dharmata and the Tathagatagarbha.”
Tathagatagarbha means ‘the womb of the Tathagatas,’ which means the origin of the mind, the origin of awareness.
When we talk about ignorance, therefore, we are not talking about it as the basic nature of reality, but rather that ignorance is something which arises from Original Mind, which is the mother and father of everything, as Ajahn Chah’s teacher Ajahn Mun liked to put it. Ignorance, and all perceptions of everything, arise out of that basic ground. Dependent Origination is thus talking about the arising of illusion out of reality.
In this respect we have a way of looking at what happens when the natural awareness of mind is clouded. When there is ignorance the mind doesn’t see clearly – often ignorance is represented by the blind leading the blind. When we lose our mindfulness this gives rise to sankhara. Sankhara means ‘divided,’ ‘particular’ or that which is compounded; it means the arising of self and other, any kind of polarity. So that, out of this mind which recognises Suchness, we start to drift off to the sense of self and other. Sankhara also means ‘thing-ness,’ the ‘world of things’ – the illusion of solid independent entities starts to arise. What we then have before us is a process of crystallisation or comlexifying, so that basic sense of division into this and that becomes strengthened and becomes viññana, which means discriminative consciousness. The mind is not only just dividing ‘this from that’ and ‘self from other,’ but is starting to be able to conceive a whole variety of different elements, different things within the sphere of attention.
Viññana leads on to nama-rupa – customarily we translate this as ‘mind and body.’ It’s a more concerted diversification of consciousness into the physical body and into all the different ranges of physical and mental activity. It’s a solidification – the mind is
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drifting off into a sense of separateness – then there is this body and there is this mind and the two are apart from each other. That leads on to the six senses, which means we are giving more reality to a greater field of perceptions. The whole world of sight and sound and flavor and smell and taste and touch comes alive and becomes far more real.
So the process is growing from a basic simple root, like a tree slowly branching, branching and branching, getting more and more complicated and multifarious, spread out and involved. A verse in the Tao Te Ching says:
The Way gives rise to the One,
The One gives rise to the Two,
Two gives rise to Three,
From the Three arise all 10,000 things.
Out of the Way, out of Suchness, there arises oneness then twoness then threeness, and once you’ve got three then you have got the ten thousand things.
As the mind absorbs into perception of a form then life appears more and more complex. Once we have a belief in the reality of the sense world, then all the feelings of pleasure and pain, like and dislike start to arise and become stronger, more interesting and compelling.
The process then describes how a feeling turns into a desire, some kind of self-centered craving; then how that desire around one particular sight or sound leads onto grasping; if an interest arises, the mind latches onto it, we see something, that produces a feeling of “That’s beautiful,” then the eye is attracted towards it and it says, “I wouldn’t mind having one of those.” Then the absorption goes further, to grasping, “Well, I really would like to have that, it’s a really beautiful thing.” This is grasping. Then the decision to act on that, “Well, no one is looking; here it is, a nice little fruit just hanging off the tree. After all, it’s only going to drop to the ground and go to waste.”
This is upadana: grasping means going after something, taking hold of it. Bhava comes
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next: this is a word translated as ‘becoming.’ It is a word that befuddled me for years and years – “Becoming, becoming, becoming what? What is becoming? What is this talking about?” It took me a long time to realise that ‘becoming’ means the thrill of getting what you want. Becoming then lead to jati, which means ‘birth’; this refers to suddenly realising, “Oh dear, this wasn’t really mine to take,” or “Well, one of them tasted good but I’ve just finished my fourteenth, I can feel indigestion coming on.” ‘Birth’ is not necessarily talking about physical birth, but rather the point of no return where we have created karma and there is no going back. Once a child is born there is no turning back. Once that situation has been born we have to live through the whole life-span of its legacy, whatever that entails. And any condition that has been invested in goes towards soka parideva, etc. – grief, sorrow and despair – ego-death in other words.
There are different patterns that one can use to illustrate this. It struck me some years ago how the early part of this pattern very much matches the structure of the material world. Physicists talk about the basis of matter and energy as a unified field, they use terms like, ‘the sea of potential’ or ‘the well of being’ (there are quite poetic people in these laboratories!). An undifferentiated field which is neither matter nor energy but which is universal, timeless – and all matter, all energy is spun forth out of this. One can actually watch a particle appear out of nowhere and disappear into nowhere. This makes it a very clear correlate for the quality of Suchness or the Unconditioned mind, the Unborn – in a way it is unborn energy or matter.
We use the Unborn, the Unoriginated, the Unconditioned, as terms for the pure mind. Matter arises from this same field, formulating itself into subatomic particles, atoms and molecules. Nowadays more and more physicists are having to bring consciousness into the equations of their understanding. They
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are coming to the conclusion that all matter has some kind of rudimentary form of consciousness. They now actually have conferences around subjects like “Can electrons think?” They are also coming up with ideas for virtual particles called psychons which are reputed to be the conveyors of consciousness.
The scientific world is thus getting on the realising that as soon as there is any organisation of energy, there will be some rudimentary form of consciousness there. With each shift beyond a certain level of complexity then the level of consciousness will go up a step. They are now making studies of how life comes into existence; they see certain arrangements of molecules will start to produce life-like behavior, consciousness-like properties that we would recognise. So in the same way, out of this ultimate field, prior to matter and energy, this Suchness, there is the basic act of formulation, things coming together. From that formulation, basic and rudimentary forms of consciousness arise until you get little creatures. The smallest living creatures are things like viruses, which are sometimes no more than a few strands of DNA.
As soon as you have even these tiniest organisms, then the organism needs ways of getting information about its environment. It needs to know, when it encounters an object, “Can I eat it? Can I mate with it? Is it going to kill me?” Even the tiniest, most basic of living creatures picks up this information. They have a consciousness, a physical form, the sense bases arise and they have a sense of their environment. As soon as the sense bases are there, then it’s “Oo, food! Chase!!” Or “Oo, enemy! Escape!” Desire arises, desire leads to clinging, clinging leads to becoming, becoming leads to birth, ageing and death, and so forth.
There is also a reason why it is called a cycle: maybe we follow some desire and we feel wretched about having done that – having eaten too much or yelled at someone – then we feel remorse afterwards. We may think, “So what, it was a painful thing, but it doesn’t
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matter.” But the whole process of rebirth hinges around the fact that having done that, having followed that impulse and not having understood it, then there is that momentum of habit whereby we are likely to do the same thing again even thought the results were painful. The habit is created because we don’t understand the pattern; we find ourselves likely to pursue the same thing again.
Say a similar situation arises – we are attracted towards seizing that thing or getting angry again. We think, “No, no, no, I shouldn’t do this, the last time I did this the result was really bad. I made a terrible mistake, I shouldn’t do it. I mustn’t get angry, I mustn’t say anything,” and we try to hold it down. But in that very act of suppression we are empowering the habit and we have created that as an issue in our world, we have given it life. That potential for action is still there, so as soon as our grip slips and we are not in control, the ZOOM up it comes, we do the same thing again, and again, and so it goes on.
Even if we don’t try and suppress it, and we have got a very good rationalising mind and we think, “Well, I’ve just got a problem with guilt, that’s all; I should be able to do what I want to do and not look back. I’ve just got a heavy suppression problem.” Then we do the same thing again and we think, “You know this really does hurt; I guess I’ve really got a bad problem with guilt, I definitely need to learn how to never look back!” We overpower our sense of shame.
However we do it, suffice to say this is why it’s called cycle of rebirth – it’s a vicious circle. Those very habits that we are still attached to by loving them, by hating them, by not understanding them, we tend to repeat them and so create cycles of fear and desire – the Ring of Fire – and we
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go round and around and around. This is Samsara, and this is not something that is remote, or tied up with stars in the sky or anything far away from us, it is right here in the very innards of our own world.
The way out is the whole nirodha aspect. With meditation, one is trying to witness the arising of ignorance, or to become aware of what causes the mind to cloud – to see the drifting of mindfulness. However, because our minds tend to be so busy we have to work our way down the scale; that is to say, when we start practicing meditation we start at the level of just witnessing the results of what we have been doing, all the pleasurable and painful results of our actions. Slowly we begin to see that difficulty comes into being because of our following of fear and desire.
We try to recognise the feeling of clinging; then learn to be able to catch the mind as we grasp at something; then to respond by letting that thing go. The more that we refine the practise, the more we will find we can catch the process at the level before desire turns into clinging, when there is just a pull towards something: “Oh that looks nice!” The wisdom mind then says, “Wait a minute, remember – remember where this goes to.” By developing this, the place where desire turns into clinging becomes a bit more visible. If one then refines the practise more, to be able to simply witness feeling, say the feeling of pleasure, then that is something delightful: there is innocence, just as is represented by the mythical image of the original couple in the Garden of Eden – joy and innocence.
It is a very important thing to recognise that we can feel innocent pleasure; it is not a crime for something to be delightful. Sometimes people get the impression that Buddhists are not supposed to enjoy anything, but the art of being able to enjoy things skilfully is a lot of what we
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are about: to be able to enjoy and be with life as it is, at that level of having the senses wide open, alert and awake to the whole world, yet not turning into desire, aversion, or to fear. The more we can establish things at that level then the more natural peace of mind we will know.
On a more fundamental level, in meditation, we begin to be aware of the Unconditioned, the primordial nature of mind, Original mind – where there is no identification or grasping at all, where the mind just has the experience of Suchness. We can observe the patterns of sankhara arising when the attention drifts, we can watch the sense of self and other, here and there, coming into being. This is something that we can do, this is not out of our reach. It is something we can directly develop in meditation. Ajahn Sumedho would often give whole Dhamma talks on this one subject, summarising it as “Ignorance complicates everything.” When the mind is clear, when there is an open view of things, there is a seeing of that complicating process. When there is no discrimination, when there is a realisation of Suchness, then a world can be watched coming into being. The sense of ‘self and other,’ ‘this and that,’ through the act of awareness and being alert to it, we can let it all go.
This is where we can really witness the strength of karmic formations, the underlying tendencies and habits that we have. What is it that most rapidly pulls our mind away from any kind of recognition of Suchness into the world of diversity? What are the benign things that we can live with easily? What sucks our eyes right out? We get to know these because these habitual tendencies of the mind are what empower the very processes of ignorance. A lot of what we are doing is becoming familiar with what is deluding, defrauding and compelling to us. What are our favorite delusions? What is your flavor – pistachio or lemon sorbet!?
It might
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seem like this is very remote and impossible to do, but I wouldn’t be talking about it if it was; anyway, this is the only way we can fulfill our life as a human being. In this very act of letting go of division and, in so doing, recognising what it is that continues to blind us and create obstructions to awareness, we can awaken to what we are, to our true nature. We are not trying to become something different or special, we are simply removing the obscurations from what we already are so that we can recognise the truth of our own and everything else’s nature that much more directly. This is the only way our life can be consummated.
To some of you who are new to Buddhism and meditation, this might all sound totally bizarre and utterly meaningless. If that is the case, then I am quite happy to take the consequences: we live for so many years in a world of seemingly solid people and things, which we see all as normal and good, so this kind of talk is… “What on earth is all this about? What does this mean? Has this got anything to do with me at all? What has this got to do with real life?”
I would like to suggest that we can look at what we call real life with much more of an objective eye. To contemplate, ”What is really going on here? What is this experience of being a separate person? What is the fabric of our world that we know? What has been going on for my whole life?” Through examining the process of experience itself we are confronted with many questions.
I came across an interesting exchange between a Western student and an old Tibetan master: His Holiness Dudjom Rinpoche (who was actually the first Buddhist teacher I ever met when I was a student in London University, years ago). Somebody asked him, “If everything is actually intrinsically perfect from the beginning, and it all happens within the context of the Great Perfection, then
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how did all of this happen?” Dudjom Rinpoche looked at him and asked, “Did it?”
That gives a pretty awesome perspective on the whole thing! Although I’m not entirely happy saying that it’s all an illusion, because we then tend to misinterpret that idea. It’s better simply to have an enquiring attitude: “What is really happening here?” “Is the world of people and things, and time and space, presidents and governments, cars and freeways, gas stations and Taco Bells – is that the real world?” “Even the world of friends and trees and skies and rivers, pure water and love songs – is that the real world?” “Meditation retreats, Dhamma teachings, life on the cushion – is that the real world?” One can keep shedding the layers. After a certain point we start to get a little bit quivery! That’s why this word nirodha is good to contemplate; it comes from the root ‘rud’ which means to check or restrain. If you are riding a horse you keep a tension on the reins, it’s a check, everything is held in check – everything is here. When the world happens here – when we see that the world happens within our mind – then, in a way, the world ceases – it is held in check, it’s in its context. “When all the world ceases to exist only the Wonderful remains.” What that means is not that there is the sudden Zooop! of a nuclear explosion, and then we don’t see or feel or hear or smell or taste or touch – the ending of the world doesn’t mean a wipe-out of experience. The ending of the world means it all happens here, within the mind, and is the experience of wonderful existence within true emptiness. It exists, but it doesn’t exist; it’s empty but it’s true. This is our abiding place.
When we contemplate the cessation of things and see it in this way, their apparent reality is punctured. One is seeing all things: birth, human life, relationships, the stars, the planet, the ground, everything that we are and
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live with; if we see it all in context, allowing it to cease means that we realise that it all happens here within the mind. The only the Wonderful remains.
Life is truly a dream,
All of its troubles I alone create
When I stop creating, the trouble stops.
With a single mind, with an unbounded heart
We can wake up to the Wonderful Existence
Within True Emptiness
That we are in the middle of right now.
What all the world ceases to exist,
Only the Wonderful remains.
Bhikshu Heng Chau
One image that I like, one that I have used most often, is to think of the process like this: We are an eye in the sky, way, way, above the earth. Awareness and the infinite blue. Everything is O.K. Then our attention is caught by some movement in the blueness down below, the eye peers down and ponders, “I wonder what that is?” The attention starts to focus and draws close like a telescope on the surface of the sea. This is sankhara, self having interest in the other. Viññana is then the patterns on the water, the different shapes of the waves. We think, “That’s interesting – beautiful waves!” Then that complexifies and diversifies into different kinds of consciousness, into perceptions, thought, feeling, body, the six senses; we’ve drawn closer and closer, now hopping from wave to wave, dodging from this one to that one, having a great time. Different types of waves: sound saves, color waves, smell waves, touch waves, thought waves – all very nice. Then suddenly there’s one we find really interesting; desire arises, “This is a great wave!” Desire turns into clinging and we think, “This one is ridable.” Suddenly as if by magic a surfboard appears and we are away! Clinging turns into becoming – surfing, riding the crest of a great wave is the perfect image for becoming.
A couple of years ago I was down by Huntington Beach. They have a beautiful sculpture by the roadway, a big bronze of a youth, a big
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bronze of a youth, a teenage boy perched on top of his board riding high on the curl of the perfect wave. The heart of Southern Californian beach life seems to be the desire to become, epitomised by the riding of the crest. Bhava is the thrill of getting what we want – we are riding our wave and we’re right in the teeth of it – TOTAL THRILL. Then bhava turns into jati which means either, “I’ve run out of wave” or “This wave is taking me to the rocks” or suchlike. Suddenly the wave collapses, we are thrown through mid-air, do a few somersaults, mouthfuls of sea water, don’t know which way is up or down. Splat!! We’re choking and spluttering and have been thoroughly dumped by the whole thing. So what do we do? Go looking for another wave, of course!
In the ignorance that implies impression that knits knowledge that finds the nameform that whets the wits that convey contacts that sweeten sensation that drives desire that adheres to attachment that dogs death that bitches birth that entails the ensuance of existentiality.
James Joyce
Finnegan’s Wake
(All twelve-parts of this series are accessible on the Ajahn Amaro | Articles page )
